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More Americans are poor than ever before, census finds
The withering recession pushed the number of Americans who are living in poverty to a 51-year high in 2009 and left a record 50.7 million people without health insurance last year, the Census Bureau announced Thursday.
The 43.6 million Americans who were poor in 2009–up from 39.8 million the year before–was the most since poverty estimates were first published in 1959. The national poverty rate of 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008, was the highest since 1994.
Were it not for federal intervention in the form of extended unemployment insurance benefits, 3.3 million more people would have fallen into poverty last year, said David Johnson, the chief of the Census Bureau's division on housing and household economics.
Food stamp benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program helped keep 2.3 million more people out of poverty.